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Welcome to the October 2017 Edition of the Stephen Johnson Photography Newsletter.

I've been reflecting on why some places keep drawing me back to them. It is not just their sheer beauty, but something more compeling. Point Lobos and Death Valley are two of these places.

— Steve

This month's View From Here column explores some places I keep returrning to, offering workshops, and gaining nourishment for the soul. We hope you find the column interesting and will consider sending us some comments.

LATEST NEWS:

I just finished work on a new Pacifica book, a gathering of work from my Pacifica Calendar series over the last few years and other photographs I've made in the course of living here for 30 years. I'm happy to have Ben Pease's great trail map as part of our outreach to bring attention to the natural wonders of Pacifica.

2018 Workshop Schedule is building with these and other great courses coming up. See what a great experience students have had on Steve's Workshops by exploring Workshop Testimonials.

Upcoming Events & Workshops

Feedback on our work has proven critical to many of us involved in the arts. In this emerging age of digital photography, it is hard to find people knowledgeable in the technology and with a background and experience in the fine arts.

This workshop is part of a series of classes concentrating on the tools within Photoshop critical to Photographers. It is a great chance to explore digital photographic editing with Steve in his custom-built lab. Hands-on help and demonstrations of his use of editing tools, executed with restraint and finesse, will benefit all of your digital photography work. This class is designed to break down the steps to really understand the processes, and to work through difficult images.

Join us for a one-day in-depth exploration of Color Management theory and practice designed to get you comfortable with the concepts and architecture of color management and build practical experience methods for using profiles for monitor display and in printing. Monitor calibration and print profiles will be explained and you will have hands-on experience making both.

Give tangible physical form to your photographs and create the only lasting form of your work, fine-art prints, as beautiful hand-made renderings.

This workshop focuses exclusively on improving your fine-art digital printing in our fully-equipped Digital Lab, primarily using Epson inkjet printers. Concentration will be on inkjet printing with color pigments and black/gray ink combinations on coated and rag papers. Learn from the digital pioneer how he obtains his impressive results during four days of lectures, printing, and feedback in the studio.

Marin Photography Club would like to invite you to be a presenter at their Education Night, Monday, May 13, 2019.

Steve will discuss his exhibition of new prints from over 50 years of Space Photography is joining the current Life Form Exhibition for a mind-blowing journey from the living world close-up to the depths of space. The Space Exhibit evolved out of Steve’s longterm interest in the space program and views offered of the heavens and by spacecraft far away. The concentration on the exotic form of the living world of the Life Form work inspired this expressive look at the wonders of the very large and distant in this print exploration of photographs Steve had been gathering for years.

A two-day digital photography workshop exploring San Francisco Bay Area Lighthouses and the vistas surrounding them. We'll spend time at Pigeon Point on the San Mateo coast, the Montara Lighthouse and Hostel, Fort Point with its spectacular views of the Golden Gate Bridge and the Point Bonita Lighthouse on the Marin Headlands.

This full-week photography workshop is an intense immersion into digital photography with one of its pioneers. In five days you will go from perhaps not even understanding what a RAW file is, to making well-crafted and thoughtful prints.

Since 1979 I have led winter photography workshops to Death Valley. I keep returning to this desert because there is a magic here, a quiet and vast expanse of sensual and strange earthworks, remarkable in color, resting under the soft winter light of January.

We will spend our first half day preparing for our outings. Topics covered will be optimal digital camera use in a variety of formats, file size and printing considerations. We will open files, review success, constantly going back in the field putting into practice lessons learned.

Jan 18, 2020 – Jan 21, 2020

Custom Workshop Scheduling: We have set up polls for recently requested workshops to see who might be interested and able to make some dates:

With all of our busy schedules and limited budgets, destination workshops or classes become a challenge, but many of you still have questions you need answered, or feedback on some new work. We want to remind you of our Virtual Online Consulting Program. This service allows all of you out there around the globe to consult online live with Steve on technical, aesthetic and workflow issues using Skype and your webcam.

We hope you can come by the gallery and see the new Panoramic Prints we've added to the National Parks Gallery, and the Exquisite Earth exhibition with its accompanying very special Exquisite Earth Portfolio 1. We invite you to join us on a workshop, rent lab space, or just say hello and let us know what you are up to photographically and what you might like to see us offer. We value your input.

NEW PHOTOGRAPH

THE VIEW FROM HERE
by Stephen Johnson

Travels of Late and Two of My Favorite Places

The workshop in Point Lobos Big Sur last month and a Whale Watching Voyage into Monterey Bay accounted for much of my travel recently. The Point Lobos trip led me down a path of thinking through why I keep returning to a few special places, and teaching there. Point Lobos and Death Valley came to mind.

Point Lobos

The history of west coast landscape photography and Point Lobos are inextricably intertwined. And for the good. One could argue that seeing abstraction in landscape photography might have been born here. The long list of influential photographers that have worked here is impressive, Edward and Brett Weston, Ansel Adams, Morely Baer, Wynn Bullock and many of their aesthetic decedents.

Point Lobos is a place full of color, and flowing over with design and abstraction opportunities that sing in black and white. It is a place that I have been visiting since 1974 and a place that helped make me a photographer. I still appreciate photographs I made there almost 40 years ago. Although I feel I've never adequately portrayed the depth of my feeling for the place.

Point Lobos was certainly one of the places I spent time with with my early 4x5 and medium format cameras following a path so many landscape photographers have gone down. Over many years I kept coming back, trying still to understand how to render this complex place and see it in my own way.

Thinking a bit about that history, I dug out the roll of film with the floating stone and scanned it. It was interesting to me that there were additional photographs beyond the two I chose at the time with possibilities that I had not noticed. The exposures were varied, some almost invisible on the original proof, and that might have discouraged me at first glance. But now, if only there was time, I could go back and explore a few of the other photographs with the digital capabilities to handle under and over-exposure with more finesse. Such curiosity comes mostly from trying to understand the evolution of my seeing.

As the digital transition began, I spent more time at Point Lobos in the mid-1990s with BW digital cameras like my Kodak DCS 460M and my high resolution BetterLight Scanning Back with its wild distortion of the moving surf.

This land has long seen human occupation, dating back at least 2500 years. In the 19th Century it was the subject of Mexican land grants, a Whaling station, an Abalone Cannery, and cattle farm. Subdivision plans and sales began in 1888, a subdivision buy-back in 1898, and its first gates charging visitors admission to the private land in 1899 by then owner A.M. Allan.

Point Lobos has been long recognized for it unique setting and beauty. Painters, poets and photographers have been making their way there for more than a century. Point Lobos became a California State Reserve in 1933. It has been a setting for movies, both dramatic and documentary. Scenes from the 1946 documentary "The Photographer" featured Edward Weston working at Point Lobos.

The rocks of Point Lobos are famous. It's Cypress trees are often called expressive. But there are so many nuances to this place. Many years ago, I became curious about the orange moss on seaside trees along the Central California Coast. This carotene encrusted algae, Trentepohlia, is quite curious and beautiful.

Fantasy forests bubbled in orange and draped in ghostly moss make for a strange and exotic experience. You almost wonder if you've walked into a scene from "Alice in Wonderland." The complexity is quite challenging photographically, but is well worth working your position, careful depth of field control, while keeping an eye out for over-exposed highlights.

Trentepohlia and Moss on Trees. Point Lobos. 2017.Canon 5DSr.

Whalers Cove Trail. Point Lobos.. 2010.Canon EOS 5D Mark II.

Successions of towers and cliffs are often defined by layers of mist. Sea lion barks and gull calls fill the air. Kelp drifts and swirls in the surf, rising and falling with each surge. Sea palms resist the surf and always seem to bounce back under the onslaught.

Crashing Surf. Point Lobos.. 2010.Canon EOS-1Ds Mark III

The crashing surf can suddenly fill the sky. Care must be exercised near the water's edge. But that very edge is often exactly where our cameras are drawn.

The park is often bathed in fog. It is then that the elaborate rock forms can really sing in their strangeness and abstraction. Sunlit shadows often break the form, and naturally change the design completely.

Rocks and Surf. Point Lobos. 2010.Canon EOS-1Ds Mark III

The colors are largely orange and blue. But then, on closer looks reveal shades of turquoise.

Reflections. Point Lobos. 2013.Canon EOS-1D X.

The sea defines this place–the roll and surge of the Pacific surf, the ever changing reflections of sky, rocks and sea.

The rocks may draw people to Point Lobos more than any other single feature. The park consists of igneous, sedimentary and metamorphic rocks. The igneous rocks are a form of granite, the sediment is largely sandstone with both both shale and fossilized mud-stone.

Much of the granite is part of the North American Plate that broke off from southern California by the collision with the Pacific Plate. see Point Lobos Geology

The science of the rocks is fascinating, but it is the complex sensual forms they embody that has been part of the magical draw of this place.

Sometimes, it is the remains of life along the seashore that becomes the irresistible subject matter. In the case of this bleaching sea lion, it was emotionally hard and seemed somewhat exploitative to photograph it. But not to photograph would have also been a shame. It is the design that makes the photograph work for me, but the emotional content that makes me care.

Sea Lions Corpse on Rocks, Point Lobos. 2008.Canon EOS-1Ds Mark III.

Sea Lions Corpse on Rocks, Point Lobos. 2008.Canon EOS-5DSr.

I am grateful for every chance I get to explore Point Lobos. Perhaps some of you might want to join me on our next workshop there.

Death Valley

Death Valley is an exquisite place. This desert is vast and the landscape so strange and complex that it feels like another world. In fact, Death Valley has been the setting for many science fiction movies and television, from Stars Wars to the Twilight Zone. It feels other worldly.

From fields of dunes to twisted towering mountains, and views that can encompass a hundred miles of visibility, Death Valley is a place I do feel compelled to return to.

Every visit to Dante's View, a mile above the valley floor, brings with it the wild view of the salt flats of the Amargosa River and the extensive flood plain below.

On workshops, we often go up to Dante's View for dawn to watch the moon-set and sunrise on the mountains to the west. It can be bitter cold on at that 5000 foot precipice. The light changed amazingly fast on this band of blowing clouds above hanging on the Panamint Mountains.

The star-filled nights are startling. We are simply unaccustomed to dark clear skies, and Death Valley can provide such a setting making for amazing night time photography.

Abstraction and sensuality abounds in the dunes and canyons. The dunes are a visceral draw to Death Valley, the other worldly quality of walking out on the rolling sand is a journey I never tire of repeating. The dunes are a journey into light, design, and abstraction. The dramatic evolution from pre-dawn to dawn is amazing in its total change of perspective and depth perception.

Morning Dunes. Death Valley, CA. 2016.Canon 5DSr.

Titus Canyon. Death Valley, CA. 2012.Canon EOS-1Ds Mark III.

Death Valley is a giant earthworks turned upside down and sideways. Titus Canyon cuts down though an upheaval of rock and time. A drive through the canyon feels like a journey through the geologic evolution of the earth.

Death Valley's winter weather can be quite dramatic. Storms can roll across the valley, clouds climbing over the Panamint Mountains to the west. Over the years, I've seen everything from blank blue skies, to snow, thunderstorms and overcast bathing the valley in soft color glowing light.

Layered Mountains in the north valley. Death Valley National Park.. 2017.Canon 5DSr.

Eroded Hill at Golden Canyon. 2017.Canon 5DSr.

Scale can be quite ambiguous in Death Valley. Hills that seem towering may not be at all large. Distances seen are way beyond our normal experience, and can stretch to more than a hundred miles.

I'm always drawn to the strange eroded crater sides of Ubehebe Crater. The 2000 year old crater blasted through an amazing layering of land formations now revealed. In soft light, they are clear and deeply intriguing. In sunlight, the shadows of the erosion often overwhelm them.

I was careful in my exposure and processing to keep the emphasis on the layering and minimize the visual impact of the shadows by keeping them as open and detailed as possible.

On Monterey Bay

Our Whale watching cruise in late August was a wonder of whales and sea lions.

There are so many photographs I am interested in from this outing, that a real exploration of the work will have to come later. I already put them off from the September Newsletter though, and couldn't resist adding a few scattered through this issue.

Featured Products

New Exquisite Earth Exhibition Catalog

Page 41

page 13

The Exquisite Earth Exhibition Catalog

As I've been on a roll on fixing bodies of work into POD books, I decided before the Exquisite Earth show could come down for new upcoming show, I wanted to create a printed record. So, now available is the 56 page 11x17 wire bound book, 5 years of work from 2005 to 2010 traveling this wondrous planet.

National Park Note cards

From "With a New Eye" Beautiful 300 line screen offset reproductions with envelopes in clear box. A great gift.

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